Association of Fetal Nasal Bone Length And Gestational Age Between 14-28 Weeks of Pregnancy

ABSTRACT Nasal bone (NB) is a significant structure to be assessed during pregnancy in 1st and 2nd trimesters. Nasal bones that start to grow as neural crest cells (NCCs) collections, can histologically be confirmed when length of fetal crown–ump is 42mm (10.9 weeks). OBJECTIVE: To find out the association of fetal nasal bone length and gestational age between 14-28 weeks of pregnancy METHODS: It was cross-sectional analytical study. It included 350 pregnant women visiting Nawaz Medicare Hospital, Faisalabad. Non-probability purposive sampling technique was used. The data were collected through questionnaire and analyzed by using SPSS 25.0. RESULTS: There appeared to be non-significant difference (p > 0.05) between the mean gestational ages by last menstrual period (22.34 + 3.391) and mean gestational age by biometry (22.48 + 3.385); whereas, corresponding mean fetal nasal bone length was measured to be 7.923 + 1.2337. Result revealed a highly significant (p<0.01) and positive correlation of gestational age by biometry with length of fetal nasal bone (0.905**). Nevertheless, there was a negative correlation of length of fetal nasal bone with both parity (-0.053) and age (-0.030). CONCLUSIONS: Study concluded that length of nasal bone increased with increasing gestational age. Study also showed sonographic correlation between fetal gestational age & length of fetal nasal bone. KEYWORDS: Fetal nasal bone length, gestational age, pregnancy, LMP, ultrasonography